


Those Who Favor Fire

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Choices, Fifteen Minute Fic, Gen, Introspection, Lies, Mother-Daughter Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 16:46:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4312683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Karen was six years old, she decided she was going to be a dragon when she grew up. She still remembers the bitter sense of betrayal when her mother told her dragons weren't real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those Who Favor Fire

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet was inspired by the 6/15/15 [15_minute_ficlets](http://15_minute_ficlets.dreamwidth.org) word #227. It has been slightly revised from the version on my journal.

When Karen was six years old, she decided she was going to be a dragon when she grew up: fierce and fearless, with wings the size of an airplane to carry her wherever she wanted, claws sharp enough to cut steel, and a roar that could burn down anyone who got in her way.

(The thing she loves most about dragons? They're _powerful_. Maybe they get killed by knights in fairy tales, but Karen's pretty sure that's because knights cheat. If she were a dragon she'd cheat right back, and she certainly wouldn't waste any time on kidnapping princesses. There are so many more interesting adventures.)

Karen still remembers the bitter sense of betrayal when her mother told her dragons weren't real. Amanda Page's world was prosaic and practical, and she gently and kindly undermined all of her daughter's fantasies until Karen stopped talking about anything beyond the most pedestrian goals. She meant well, of course. She didn't want to see her daughter crash and burn from unrealistic expectations. And when Karen burned her life to the ground for other reasons, Amanda took her back in despite the rest of the family's misgivings and rebuilt her daughter in her own image: go to college, earn a degree, get a steady job, find a modest volunteer group to join, be polite to the neighbors, save money for a rainy day.

Be sensible. Be safe.

Be a good girl and the world will be good to you in return.

The wildest thing Karen's done between then and now was move to New York without telling anyone until she'd already landed at JFK and caught a taxi to the closet-sized sublet she'd rented online. She's tried her best to mitigate that shock with weekly phone calls full of chirpy gossip, plus visits back to Burlington for all the major family-gathering holidays. She's made a point of not lying anymore.

Now, though, Karen turns her phone around and around in her hands and wonders how on earth she's supposed to explain this past week. She's been framed for murder, nearly killed twice, and saved by a madman in a black mask. She's lost her job and thrown her fate in with two crusading lawyers who barely have twenty bucks between them. She's thinking of pulling the threads she found in the files she stole, until she can find whoever escaped the collapse of Union Allied, because she knows -- she _knows_ \-- that the catastrophes that upended her world were only minor setbacks to them. The people who tried to kill her, who _did_ kill Daniel Fisher, are still walking free and unpunished.

And she's started lying again.

Her mother will be appalled. She'll try to make Karen move back home, add her voice to the chorus in Karen's mind telling her to close her eyes, let this drop, take her temporary escape and make it permanent.

That's the practical thing to do. The sensible thing. The safe thing.

Karen presses her mother's name on her contact list and bites her lips as she listens to the dial tone. She's spent the past ten years biting back every impulse to speak up, to speak out, to fight. She is sick and tired of living her mother's life. But what kind of person would she be if she throws away the second chance her mother worked so hard to give her?

In Vermont, Amanda Page picks up. "Karen, baby, how was your week?" she says, voice warm and distracted.

Karen could shatter her complacency in ten seconds if she tells the truth. She feels the edge of the cliff with her metaphorical toes, looks into the abyss.

All her mother ever wanted was for Karen to be comfortable and safe.

She never asked what Karen wanted for herself.

Karen bares her teeth in something too raw to be a smile, and leaps. "Really good, Mom! You know I told you Union Allied wouldn't give me a raise this fiscal year? Well, I started looking around, just in case, and a couple days ago I got a new job! It's with a law firm--"

(The other thing Karen loves about dragons? Nobody ever said they were _good_.)

**Author's Note:**

> I am still working out my personal headcanon for MCU!Karen's mysterious past, but I've stolen/adapted a bit of her comics history in that I've decided she's from Vermont... but from a real (albeit smallish) city instead of an apparently fictional town.


End file.
